They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11: The Lie That Defines the Times

Note: The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming eBook, on the attacks of 9-11 and the circumstances surrounding it. It is, to say the least, a rough draft, and in my opinion totally inadequate as something I would eventually like to have considered a go-to authority on what really happened that day. The evidence is, literally, endless, and every time I felt I was close to completion, I was reminded of another event or circumstance that was just too important to leave out.

Edit: I feel like I may actually have completed my entire narrative on the events of the day. It is likely some other key piece of evidence will be reminded to me, and I will revise yet again. But for all intents and purposes, this is it. I will at a later date provide a resource page for this chapter and the rest of my book, so that critics and skeptics might look into the validity of these claims. If you find this useful as a tool to educated the uninformed and the willfully ignorant, please spread this to anyone willing to listen...

America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.

[…]

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. – Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, September 1998

At the time of this writing, which is near the time I'll finish this treatise and send it out into the universe, the ten year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks is less than a week away. Having read the last chapter, you can easily imagine where this is going: The 9-11 attacks were a false flag black op perpetrated by criminal elements of the United States and likely the Israeli governments.

Let us first delve into the context of my use of the word “government” in this case. People, in their groupthink/ego identities, believe that “government” and “country” are one and the same. They are not. Your country is the society, the culture, the geography, the people; your government is a select group of elites with enormous power and therefore, if you believe in Lord Acton's maxim, inherently and inescapably corrupt. Associating government with country brings about an aggressive, often violent defensive reaction, because your patriotism is who you are at your core, and to say that your country – your government – could kill 3,000 of its “own” people is a monstrous blasphemy.

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as internationalists and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. – David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 2002

And yet even among the criminal elements of our government responsible for this crime – and keep in mind this was criminal elements, not the entire government top to bottom – these criminals are not Americans the way you might think of them as Americans. They may have been born in a geographical area with imaginary borders commonly referred to as The United States of America, but they do not consider themselves Americans. Their explicit goal is to destroy America, and all other sovereign nations, to bring about a global government under the control of the banking elite. You are not their brethren; they do not look at you any differently than they do the people from Russia, China, India, Africa, the Middle East, etc. You are pawns on the grand chessboard, and they have been quarantined from the vile masses for so long that they feel no empathy, no compassion, no sense of connection to any of you. Their hearts are black, and they have no soul.

Examine the pictures of slaughtered Afghan children, or the birth deformities caused by our depleted uranium contamination of Iraq for proof of this. They won't show these on the news, because if they did, the humanity, the empathy, these black-hearted monsters have tried to stamp out of you might be awoken. It is essential for you to continue to believe these wars are as sanitary as possible, and that the enemy is seen as inhuman as possible, so that no matter what happens you really don't mind it very much. I digress.

The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. - J. Edgar Hoover

As we begin to examine the evidence that 9-11 was a staged, self-inflicted wound, I beckon you back to the preface and humbly ask you keep in mind that, while there are certain aspects of the conspiracy we can be sure about, I do not, nor is it likely that I or anyone else not involved in the highest levels of the conspiracy will ever know exactly what happened on that Tuesday morning. What can be almost fully deduced is what did not happen, particularly what could not have happened within the framework of the official narrative, which is one of the most grotesque lies ever perpetrated on mankind. Once what could not have happened, as well as the fact that a cover-up took place, is established, the question then becomes, who had the motive to lie about it, and qui bono – who benefited?

This doesn't involve theories. You can take the facts and do with them as you please, but this isn't the paranoid delusions of whackjobs who hate their government. If anyone is mentally deranged, it's the people who, having examined all the facts with an open mind, while perhaps not being sold on the fact that 19 Islamic radicals with box cutters could not possibly carried out the attack, see nothing amiss about the way the official narrative formed and was forced down our throats, the way evidence and events that contradict the official narrative were deliberately swept under the rug; the way we willfully filtered them out of our minds. If you consider the two World Wars and Vietnam alone (there were other wars based on false pretenses as well), their lies have collectively killed upwards of 600,000 Americans alone. Take this into consideration if you think “our” government wouldn't murder 3,000 of its “own people”.

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor. – A Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, page 63, September 2000

The Three Towers?

Impossible Physics

Sky scrapers are not built to collapse. For one, they are always built in high population areas, designed to hold thousands of people, and surrounded by many other buildings that would be damaged were they to collapse. Before we could be confident in building such structures, we had to know with a degree of certainty that they wouldn't just fall to pieces one day. Indeed, from the bottom to the top, each floor must be designed to support the enormous weight of all floors above it against the force of gravity. Considering the massive amount of weight so much steel, concrete, office furniture and people exert, in 110-story buildings, the strength of the building's structure must be significant.

The official conspiracy theory revolves around the enormous damage done by the two jumbo jets – the combined catastrophe of the planes slamming into the buildings at 500mph and 9,000 pounds of jet fuel exploding and burning. But as catastrophic as these compounding events may seem, the buildings were actually built to withstand them.

By some strange coincidence, less than nine months before the attack and 30 years after the buildings were constructed, Frank A. Demartini, on-site construction manager for the World Trade Center, gave an interview in which he was asked how well the towers could withstand an impact from a jumbo jet. He answered,

The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door -- this intense grid -- and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.

Demartini is believed to have died in the attacks, as he remained in the building to assist with the evacuation, surely content with the knowledge that an airline impact could not cause the building to collapse.

Further, it is widely assumed that the jet fuel burned at enormous temperatures for what we believe was an extended period of time, causing either melting or weakening of the steel columns holding the building up. But even if jet fuel could melt steel – it can't – we know the jet fuel had already burned off – that massive explosion upon Flight 75 (the second plane) slamming into the South Tower. Jet fuel is essentially kerosene, and anyone who's had a kerosene heater in their home knows it does not burn particularly hot. Anyone with a wood burning stove knows that you can burn it for days or even weeks on end without it melting.

Thus you might consider it miraculous that firefighters had actually reached the crash zone of the South tower before it collapsed – evidence, in the form of a tape recording of firefighters reporting they had reached the 78th floor sky lobby, which was where the plane impacted, has been deliberately withheld by the Department of Justice and was only obtained after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Close-up photos were taken of the impact site which featured human beings, alive and well, waving for help. Moreover, for a considerable amount of time before the towers collapsed, thick, black smoke vomited from the towers, indicating not a raging inferno, but a dying, oxygen-starved fire.

Despite claims to the contrary by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), there is no real evidence that any of the core columns had at any point reached temperatures of even 428°F. How can there be? Every cubic centimeter of the collapsed buildings was hastily disposed of before any kind of investigation of physical evidence was conducted. All of NIST's investigations of the towers must, therefore, be based upon conjecture alone. More on this in a moment. Even if the columns were heated to the extreme temperatures NIST, without evidence, claims they were, steel has incredible thermal conductivity, and, given the interconnectedness of the Towers' steel framed structure, the heat would've been drawn away from the impact zone and distributed it throughout the entire building. Considering the relatively weak intensity of the heat present, there is no reason to believe the steel was weakened at all. Indeed, to “prove” their theory, NIST conducted heat transfer tests on isolated steel elements. The entire collapse theory is based on blatantly bad and faulty science, but since you're not a scientist, much less a physicist, they expect you to swallow their story without question. And we do.

Finally, most assume that the plane's impact must have caused some kind of structural damage to the building, but, added to Demartini's testimony above, NIST concluded that the most significant effect the planes' impact had on the towers was the dislodging of fire-proofing material from the steel columns (steel catches fire?). Consider this in tandem with the lack of evidence fires exceeded 428°F and you start to see the official conspiracy theory is far more delusional than what is presented here.

Gravity, Resistance

We can wax philosophical about the possibility that the impacts and fire did in fact cause the buildings to collapse, but all measures of common sense, not to mention the laws of physics, must be abandoned when explaining the manner in which they collapsed once the collapse initiated.

According to Newton's law of gravity, a billiard ball dropped from the top of one of the towers would hit the ground in 9.2 seconds. According to NIST, the 9-11 Commission Report and corroborated by seismic measurements of the collapse, the South and North Towers collapsed in 11 and 9 seconds, respectively.

Again, take a moment to imagine the physics of a skyscraper: hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and concrete structured to push upwards, supporting the weight of everything above it, resisting the pull of gravity. And yet the top of the collapse reached the ground as if nothing below it were present to slow its rate of descent – it was as if it were a free-fall collapse, even though both buildings collapsed, in exactly the same fashion, directly into the path of greatest resistance.

Even if a global collapse occurred in a natural, physically possible manner, even at one floor per second it would taken 90 seconds to collapse. A ten second collapse of 110 story buildings is only possible if there were explosives moving the mass of concrete and steel below the collapse out of the way, allowing the cascading destruction to move downwards at free-fall speed.

Careful examination of either tower collapsing shows explosive squibs ejecting from the building just below the collapse point and as many as 20 floors below the collapse. Massive blocks of concrete and steel girders weighing several hundred thousand pounds are shown being explosively ejected outwards and were found as far as two football fields away, some embedded into nearby buildings. The horizontal speed of some of these girders has been clocked at 70 miles per hour. What could hurl such gigantic masses of steel and concrete at such speeds with such force? Certainly not gravity, which as common sense, not to mention physical law, tells us would pull matter toward the center of the Earth.

And finally, after the collapse, the core columns can be seen cut, as if with a welding torch, at about a 45 degree angle. Standard demolitions employ the same method – angled inward to push the building in on itself; molten steel can be seen around the edges of the cut. This cannot have been a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Nor could the molten metal found in the basement areas of the towers, as well as building 7 (building what?), which was found for up to five weeks after the collapse. Fire fighters described seeing the molten metal as if they were in a foundry, or like watching lava flow from a volcano. This is significant on several levels. First, we know that jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel – steel melts at over 2000°; satellite thermal imaging recorded temperatures upwards of 2600° at least five days after the collapse. Finally, fires are known to have burned underground for months after the attacks, not being brought to an end until late December 2001. This despite an unimaginable amount of water being showered upon them, from the firefighters themselves and from several subsequent severe thunderstorms.

You couldn't even begin to imagine how much water was pumped in there. It was like you were creating a giant lake. – Tom Manley, Uniformed Firefighters Association, NYC's largest fire department union

There could have been no jet fuel in the WTC7 collapse, and yet molten steel and incredibly hot temperatures were observed there as well. The only acceptable explanation for this has been offered by Brigham Young physicist Steven Jones, who presented compelling evidence of the existence of explosive nano thermite in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Thermite itself burns so hot it will cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. Thermate contains an additive which not only makes it burn incredibly hot, but makes it explosive as well.

If the debris field were allowed to be examined, as any other crime scene would have, evidence of explosives inside the building – both from the thermate residue found in the rubble and the wreckage exhibiting evidence of having been damaged by explosive – may have been discovered. We could also tell how much damage the planes caused at the point of impact, and how much the steel melted or warped to cause a collapse, per the official conspiracy theory.

Thus, the wreckage was speedily and secretly carted away, with little regard to the remains of the victims it contained, to a landfill in Staten Island, where it was subsequently processed and sold to China, made into souvenir keepsakes, and implemented into the construction of a Navy warship. Dump trucks carrying the wreckage were fitted with GPS devices, and one driver who took too long on his lunch break was fired on the spot. If this had occurred at any place and time other than the World Trade Center (and the Pentagon) on 9-11, we would, without hesitation, call it by its appropriate name: a cover-up.

Bombs

I’m on the basement—the basement has six levels of basement; B1 to B6. On the B1 level were all of the support companies that dealt with the World Trade Center … I was talking to a supervisor at 8:46 am and all of a sudden we hear a very loud “BOOM!” – an explosion so hard that it pushed us upwards! … [I]t came from the basement between the B2 level, and the B3 level.

[…]

At that moment everyone started screaming—the explosion was so hard that the walls cracked—the ceiling fell on top of us. The sprinkler system got activated. When I was about to say out loud “it was the generator” we hear “BOOM!” – the impact of the plane on the top of the building.

Two different events. Two different times.

Now when this happened … screams everywhere … a person comes running into the office and starts yelling “explosion, explosion, explosion!” His hands were extended and his skin was pulled from under his armpit... all the way to the top of his fingerprints… and it was hanging on both hands. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was a piece of clothing. And then I realized it was his skin and I said, “What happened? What happened?” …and when I looked at his face, I could see that he was missing pieces of his face. – William Rodriguez, janitor, North Tower

Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me. – Edmund McNally, 97th floor, South Tower

Shortly after 9 o'clock … Chief Albert Turi (Chief of Safety for the New York Fire Department) … received word of the possibility of a secondary device, that is another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said there was another explosion which took place, and then an hour after the first hit – the first crash that took place – he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here, so obviously according to his theory he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. – Pat Dawson, NBC News, September 11, 2001

We first assembled on West Street, where we saw someone burnt beyond recognition. We were like “What is going on here?” … [The lobby of the North Tower] looked like a bomb went off, and we started making our way up the stairs to rescue as many people as we could. … The elevators just blew right out. We couldn’t believe it. The plane hits 80 floors up but the elevators explode at least five minutes later? It was unreal. – John Schroeder, FDNY Engine Company 10

"Tommy Hetzel was with me and everybody else also gets out of the elevator when it stops on the 24th floor. There was a huge amount of smoke. Tommy and I had to go back down the elevator for tools and no sooner did the elevators close behind us, we heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb. It was such a loud noise, it knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator.

Luckily, we weren't caught between floors and were able to pry open the doors. People were going crazy, yelling and screaming. And all the time, I am crawling low and making my way in the dark with a flashlight to the staircase and thinking Tommy is right behind me. … I somehow got into the stairwell and there were more people there. When I began to try and direct down, another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one hits about two minutes later, although it's hard to tell, but I'm thinking, “Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993!” – Lou Cacchioli, FDNY Engine Company 47, September 11, 2001

There was another big, big explosion. In the other tower, flames coming out and this billowing grey smoke. People still not panicking, people not quite understanding what was going on. Then somebody said that they saw an airliner go into one of those towers. Then, I don't know how later than that, we had that big explosion from much, much lower. I don't know what on earth caused that. – Stephen Evans, BBC North American Business correspondent, September 11, 2001

I guess about three minutes later you just heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions. – Craig Carlsen, FDNY Ladder 8

At 10:30 I tried to leave the building, but as I got outside I heard a second explosion, and another rumble, and more smoke, and more dust. I ran inside the building, the chandeliers shook, and again, black smoke filled the air. Within another five minutes we were covered again with more silt, and more dust. And then a fire marshal came in and said we had to leave, because if there was a third explosion this building might not last. – Ann Thomson, MSNBC, September 11, 2001

… that would put us a block and a half away from the site of where the explosion was. That area has just been evacuated because police have found what they describe as a suspicious device and they fear that it might be something that could lead to another explosion. Obviously there's a real sense of caution here on the part of police. I spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris, and they told me they have reason to believe that one of the explosions at the World Trade Center aside from the ones that may have been caused by the impact of the plane with the building, may have been caused by a van that was parked in the building that may have had some type of explosive device in it, so their fear is that there may have been explosive devices planted either in the building, or in the adjacent area and that's why they are being so cautious – Rick Sanchez, MSNBC, September 11, 2001

I believe, from what I understand the fireman said, that the street collapsed on the outside of the building and when the street collapsed, there was an explosion which threw me. And it must've threw me across the room and I ended up going unconscious. – Sam Esposito, CBS Channel 2 News NY

As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down. – Edward Cachia, FDNY Engine Company 53

Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.

I went inside and I told everybody that the other building or there was an explosion occurring up there and I said I think we have another major explosion.

[…]

So here these explosions are getting bigger and louder and bigger and louder and I told everybody if this building totally explodes, still unaware that the other building had collapsed, I'm going in the water. – Karin Deshore, Fire Captain, FDNY Battalion 6

I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.

[…]

You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too. – Stephen Gregory, Commissioner, Bureau of Communications

The flashlight led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalator and out to Church Street. There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go down Church Street toward Broadway, but I had to do it. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run. – Theresa Veliz, 47th Floor, North Tower

As we were getting our gear on and making our way to the stairway, there was a heavy duty explosion. – interview with unknown fireman, September 11, 2001

We were trying to get some of the people out, but then there was secondary explosions and then subsequent collapses. – interview with unknown fireman, September 11, 2001

Fireman 2: as if they had planned to take down a building, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom …

Fireman 1: All the way down, I was watchin it, and runnin'

And then all of a sudden it started like … it sounded like gunfire … you know, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and then all of a sudden three big explosions. – Interview with unknown injured witness, September 11, 2001

And on and on it goes; eye witness after eye witness testifying to the presence of bombs in the buildings, bombs in the basement, bombs collapsing the street around the towers. And in the final report for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (more commonly known as the 9-11 Commission), what is their conclusion about what caused these explosions?

They never mention them in the first place.

Common sense demands that, as an aspect of the terrorist attacks which wounded and likely killed many people, these explosions would receive the same scrutiny as any other aspect of the attack, like how 19 men armed with box cutters defeated a trillion dollar mega-defense system that kept the Soviet Union at bay for 50 years. But not a mention was made about it. Why?

Perhaps because it was simply a can of worms they could not open. If they admit there were bombs in the buildings, and secondary explosions going off, witnessed and documented by countless people, then the next obvious train of inquiry becomes, how did the bombs get in the building? The American people would be equally as skeptical at the assertion that 19 al Qaeda clowns not only infiltrated four commercial aircraft and flew them into buildings but, in addition, managed to covertly wire the towers with massive bombs, as they would at the assertion that the bombs were planted by the American government. Otherwise the government would be forced to postulate a much wider, more involved al Qaeda conspiracy, involving a much greater number of people, which, one would think, would not be a problem except for one small item: such a conspiracy simply did not exist.

And so faced with this inconvenient circumstance, they simply threw the whole story down the memory hole, and even though these countless testimonies are still on the web, from pedestrians to EMTs to firemen to police to journalists, the media, and thus the collective American mind, consciously or unconsciously swept it under the rug. These events officially do not exist; they never happened. And anyone who brings them up is laughed at. It is one of the most poignant examples of media-induced amnesia you'll ever find.

Security

How could they let this happen? They knew this building was a target. Over the past few weeks we'd been evacuated a number of times, which is unusual. I think they had an inkling something was going on. – Ben Fountain, financial analyst, 47th floor South Tower

Surely the question most on our minds when considering such astounding accusations is, how could they have pulled all this off? How could they have rigged three (three?) skyscrapers for demolition without any of the many thousands of people working there knowing about it? How could such an operation be kept secret?

Meet Marvin Bush, the youngest brother of then-President George W. Bush. Marvin was a principal in a company called Securacom, which provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Bush also served.

According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center “up to the day the buildings fell down.” The company lists as government clients “the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S Air force, and the Department of Justice,” in projects that “often require state-of-the-art security solutions for classified or high-risk government sites.”

New York Newsday reported that a heightened security alert was lifted five days before the attack. Daria Coard, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on September 6, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.

On the weekend before September 11, there was a 'power down' condition in the South Tower, leaving the building without electrical supply for approximately 36 hours from the 50th floor up. According to Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust, 97th floor South Tower, “Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors and many, many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower.”

Evacuation

[A] few minutes later we heard the radio announcer say that a second plane was heading straight for 2 WTC. A few seconds later our building once again swayed back and forth as the as result of the second plane crashing into 2 WTC. I hear now that it was 18 minutes between crashes. In those 18 minutes we heard no sirens, only the ones in the building when there's a fire, there was not one announcement from authorities at the WTC alerting us that there was an emergency situation and that we should evacuate, nothing. If we hadn't turned the radio on, we would not have known what the hell had happened. I was in such a rage. – Sabrina (last name withheld), 89th floor North Tower

Immediately after the North Tower was struck by Flight 11, the first plane to strike the WTC, towers 6 and 7 were evacuated. However, those in the North Tower were strongly advised to remain at their desks. Dan Baumbach, a software engineer from Merrick in the North Tower, was stunned to hear officials telling those trying to evacuate to return to their offices. “The reason we got out was because we didn't listen,” he said.

All of a sudden you heard, “Shhh!” Everyone was quiet. That's when they made that announcement: “Building 1 is in a state of emergency. Building 2 is secure. You're fine, you can return to your workstations.” – Nancy Cassidy, 80th floor, South Tower

An announcement came over the speaker system that we were not in imminent danger and that we should return to our offices. – Tiffany Keeling, 61st floor, South Tower

As soon as we reached the concourse level, the security guard stopped us and said, “Where are you going?” (the North Tower is on fire) “Oh, that was just an accident. Two World Trade is secured. Go back to your office.” – Stanley Praimnath, 82nd floor, South Tower

It can reasonably be dismissed that workers were told to remain in their offices after the North Tower was struck. After all, we know that the buildings were designed to withstand a jumbo jet impact. And, at the time, no one knew exactly what had hit the tower – early reports described a small plane – or thought that it might be part of a terrorist attack still in progress.

But as the above survivors testify to, even after the second plane had struck the towers, and it had become apparent that this was a purposeful attack, not a tragic accident, workers were still told to remain in their buildings. This after just eight years prior al Qaeda terrorists (with the help of the FBI) detonated a massive bomb in the North Tower with the intent of causing it to topple over into the South Tower, killing seven people and injuring over a thousand. During this attack there was no hesitation to evacuate the survivors.

I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us. – Rudolph Giuliani, interview with Peter Jennings, September 11, 2001 (Giuliani later denied making this comment)

Why were survivors encouraged to stay in their offices during an apparent terrorist attack? How many would've survived if they hadn't been told to stay? The greater the death toll, the more horrifying the carnage, the greater the collective fury of the American people could be harnessed to support the underlying objective of the event, which, ten years on, is apparent. Nobody has benefited more from the attacks than the United States government, with its vicious and unceasing assault on our liberties and dignity (been to an airport lately?); the banksters who not only loaned, at interest, our government the trillions necessary to carry out our “vengeance”, but also have seen record profits from drug money laundered through their banks after the opium trade was restarted following our invasion of Afghanistan, which I'll delve more into in a moment; and finally, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, General Electric, Halliburton and its subsidiaries, etc – the military industrial complex – and all who've profited from this inhuman war racketeering scheme.

Building What?

On September, 2001 three large office buildings – 110, 110, and 47 floors – burned for 56 minutes, 85 minutes, and 6 hours, respectively. In the history of steel-framed sky scrapers, they are the only ones to have collapsed from fire. Ever. Before or after 9-11. Are there examples to compare these to?

In May 1988 a fire at the 62-story Interstate Bank Building in Los Angeles destroyed four floors and damaged a fifth floor. The fire burned for four hours, but did not collapse. In February 1991 a fire destroyed eight floors of the 38-story One Meridian Plaza building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The fire burned for 18 hours, but the building did not collapse. In October 2004 in Caracas, Venezuela, a fire in a 56-story office tower burned for more than 17 hours and spread over 26 floors. It did not collapse. In February 2005 the 32-story Windsor Building in Madrid, Spain caught fire and burned for two days. The building was completely engulfed in flames, yet it did not collapse.

Building 7, or World Trade Center 7, contained several government offices, including the IRS, CIA, Department of Defense, Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Secret Service, among others. It was not struck by a plane, but was only moderately damaged, supposedly due to the collapse of the towers. It had small, sporadic fires randomly dispersed on only a few floors.

Yet the building collapsed, again, at the rate of free fall, again, into its own footprint, in a perfectly neat and symmetrical fashion, causing minimal damage to the adjacent buildings. In order for this to occur, all (approximately) 80 of the building's core columns would have had to fail simultaneously; the fires that did exist were found randomly throughout the building, and there were no more than 4 or 5 fires, total, in the whole building.

Adding to the obvious is Larry Silverstein, who owned buildings 1, 2, and 7 – coincidentally the only 3 buildings that “collapsed” – and who, weeks before the attack, took out multi-billion dollar insurance policies on the buildings. He later went on PBS and admitted that WTC7 was “pulled” by his own suggestion. To “pull” a building is to demolish it. And watching the building collapse, that it was demolished is patently obvious. It starts with the central core columns being blown out, so that none of the building collapses outward and damages other buildings. Then charges are seen blowing up the windows in a wave from the low floors to the top. Finally the entire building collapses all at once, perfectly symmetrical, and lands in the neatest pile of debris you've ever seen. Watch any footage of a controlled demolition and you will see the exact same thing.

In their denial, I've actually had people accept that the building was demolished, but that it was reasonable to demolish the building because of the damage the fires caused – text book collective rationalization. It is lost on them how in only a few hours they wired a 47 story building to be demolished, in the middle of a terrorist attack, with multiple floors on fire – it typically takes weeks for a skilled demolition team to wire a building for controlled demolition. Again, using your own God-give common sense, how possible is all of this? It is not possible at all.

Mainstream news video exists of firefighters and emergency responders warning news crews to get away from the building, or to keep an eye on it because it was going to come down. How could anyone know this, especially, again, regarding a building that suffered only moderate damage? They knew because this was a planned event.

Most people do not remember Building 7 because, as the years progressed, it was wiped from Americans' collective memory by simple omission. Each year, we remember the collapse of the towers, but no mention is made for the loss of Building 7. On the 8th anniversary of the attacks I visited Ground Zero in New York City and saw first hand that the pit that once was the twin towers was still just that – a pit. But Building 7 was already fully rebuilt and completely operational, as if it had been there all along. Surrounded by the hated, the despised, the frightening group of crazy people known as 9-11 Truthers, when I inquired where Building 7 was I had it pointed out to me that Building 7 was rebuilt with haste so that attention would not be drawn to it; so that people would forget it ever happened. And they have, to the great delight of the perpetrators: Building 7 is the smoking gun evidence that proves 9-11 was a pre-planned staged event, as it was obviously brought down by controlled demolition. Pay attention to their ceremonies, to their commentaries, to all of their talk about the events of that day, and notice that Building 7 is never mentioned.

Missing Planes

In the case of the Pentagon and Shanksville, one need only to examine the “wreckage” to know something is amiss - amiss in that there was no wreckage. We are led to believe that two jumbo jets were completely obliterated by the jet fuel explosion – the first time in the history of air travel this has ever happened. It is, I suppose, remotely feasible that the passengers, luggage, and fuselage were destroyed, but not one of the four Rolls Royce engines, made of steel and titanium alloy, weighing six tons each, were recovered. Amazingly, even though these impacts and explosions managed to obliterate tempered steel and titanium, human remains were found and identified at the Pentagon site (belonging to those who were in the Pentagon when the plane crashed).

From my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site, is the actual side of the building that's crashed in. And as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse. Even though if you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that the floors have all collapsed, that didn't happen immediately. It wasn't until almost about 45 minutes later that the structure was weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed. – Jamie McIntyre, CNN, September 11, 2001

We are left to wonder, if you were even aware of this fact before I tell you, why every security/surveillance camera that would've shown a 757 hitting the Pentagon – and there were several cameras that would've shown this – were confiscated by the FBI during the 24 hours after the crash, and the limited footage from these videos released to the public do not show an airplane hitting the building. Aren't there surveillance cameras covering every square inch of the Pentagon's perimeter? Indeed there are. For some reason we are left to speculate – was it a 757? Was it a cruise missile? If it was, after all, a passenger jet that crashed into the Pentagon, all the government has to do is release the videos. To this day, all requests have been denied. One thing that cannot be denied, when reason and common sense are applied, is that the Pentagon could not have been struck by Flight 77 piloted by Hani Hanjour. I will explain this shortly.

Further, like the World Trade Center, this crime scene was scrubbed and cleaned so that any evidence was immediately removed, not to mention contaminated. The FBI, along with Pentagon employees and civilians, combed the lawn, picking up any evidence, and carting it away. None of the pieces have ever been verified as being part of Flight 77 or a Boeing 757. It was just assumed that anything found must've been from the plane. And then, finally, after the evidence had been cleared, after the surveillance tapes had been confiscated, they literally covered up the crime scene, by unloading gravel onto the entire lawn in front of the west wing of the Pentagon. Meanwhile, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania …

I can just remember seeing very small bits of debris everywhere. There really wasn't any large sections of debris or aircraft. … It just looked like somebody just dropped a bunch of metal out of the sky. … It looked like someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch and dumped trash into it. – Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller

It didn't look like a plane crash because there was nothing that looked like a plane. I never seen anything like it. Just like a big pile of charcoal. – Homer Barron, first responder, Shanksville, PA

We (were) literally surrounded by debris, and there's a very strong odor of scorched earth. It doesn't smell like jet fuel, it smells like … How do you describe it? Burned earth. It smells like burned earth. – Jim Parsons, WTAE-TV

Looking at the crash site itself is a sobering experience. It is difficult to believe that a large Boeing 757 aircraft plunged into the ground with such force that the plane literally disintegrated and created a still smoldering crater. – Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, September 12, 2001

FOX News reporter: I wanna get quickly to Chris Konicki … he's a photographer with the Pittsburgh affiliate, a Fox affiliate. He was back there just a couple minutes ago and Chris, I've seen the pictures, it looks like there's nothing there, except for a hole in the ground.

Photographer Chris Konicki: Ah, basically that's right. The only thing you can see from where we where, ah, was a big gouge in the earth and some broken trees. We could see some people working, walking around in the area, but from where we could see it, there wasn't much left.

Reporter: Any large pieces of debris at all?

Konicki: Nah, there was nothing, nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there.

Reporter: Smoke? Fire?

Konicki: Nothing. It was absolutely quite. It was, uh, actually very quiet. Um, nothing going on down there. No smoke. No fire. Just a couple of people walking around. They looked like part of the NTSB crew walking around, looking at the pieces.

At 11:43am on September 11, 2001, the Associated Press reported that an airplane had made an emergency landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport due to fears there was a bomb on board; it was taken to a secure location and its passengers were evacuated. United Airlines identified the plane as Flight 93. The article and subsequent investigations do not explain how this could be possible, nor what happened to Flight 93 after it landed in Cleveland and had its passengers evacuated. The story was simply revised, and then ultimately forgotten.

But something happened in Shanksville. At the crash site, very little resembling a jumbo jet could be found. Except of course, miraculously, the personal effects of the hijackers. More on that in a moment. But more astounding, there were secondary debris fields up to eight miles away, where residents reported burning debris falling from the sky. Finally, there is the photograph taken by a resident in Shanksville showing the mushroom cloud from the impact of what we assume to be United 93. But the explosion looks more like military ordinance than an airplane crash, when comparison photographs are examined. Considering that, we are told, the jet fuel from the two planes that struck the World Trade Center burned long enough and hot enough to bring both buildings down, one would expect that the jet fuel from United 93 would've burned for some time after the crash took place. As the eyewitness accounts above testify to, there was no burning jet fuel at all. In fact, not much of anything was on fire.

Beckoning you back to the beginning of this chapter, it is important to keep in mind that there are aspects to the conspiracy that may never be known. Did the military just drop an L-RAD or a missile in an open field in Shanksville? Or did a fighter pilot disobey Cheney's stand-down order (which I'll delve into momentarily) and shoot down United 93? The massive debris field and eyewitness testimonies suggest this may have happened. But what happened in Cleveland?

What we can deduce from what we do know with a degree of certainty is that what happened in Shanksville did not occur the way the official conspiracy theory tells us it did. United 93 was not brought down by an act of heroism, though it is pleasing and comforting to believe it was. “Let's Roll” has become the battle cry of a vengeful, blindly furious American public. It was all a lie.

Planted Evidence

It is not entirely true to say that both planes and everything in them were obliterated. In Shanksville, several of the hijackers IDs, drivers licenses, and/or passports were found, mostly intact, at the site, as well as a red bandanna in Shanksville, supposedly worn by one of them. It is ridiculous to say that the explosion destroyed the entire plane, including indestructible engines, yet these incriminating items were miraculously found at the scene. How convenient for them. Similar documents were found at the Pentagon, and, perhaps most miraculous of all, the passport of Satam Al Suqami, one of the hijackers, flew out of his pocket at the point of impact, survived the massive collision and jet fuel explosion that we are led to believe collapsed the entire 110-story skyscraper, and then survived the collapse, which annihilated the entire building and practically everything in it, and was found in near pristine condition in the rubble. The media reported this without batting an eyelash as to how absurd the whole thing was. And why not? Only the kooks and nutjobs who believe our government could/would do such a thing noticed.

“Terrorists”

As if you haven't already had your fill of absurdities and impossible coincidences, we delve into the nineteen jihadist kamikazes who supposedly orchestrated the entire convoluted plot, brought an entire nation to its knees, and subverted the laws of physics, perhaps through their unwavering faith in Allah. As much as the official account of how the buildings collapsed is insulting to intelligent people, the ludicrous story behind the “terrorists” involved rivals it.

Bin Laden

We begin at the top, with the globalists' very own incarnation of Emmanuel Goldstein. With his apparent death in early 2011, the CIA's go-to man was finally cast aside; we await his inevitable successor, who will undoubtedly terrorize a new generation of Americans who will demand ever more measures be taken to assure their safety as they grow fat and stupid and obsess themselves with reality TV, shopping and other trivium while our best and brightest slaughter the bogeymen on the other side of the world, defending freedom. Indeed, as I've written this account, we've been informed to be frightened of a new threat: a 9-11 anniversary attack, which involved Bin Laden's successor, whoever he is. And no one bothers to ask how utterly idiotic it would be for al Qaeda to try to replicate the 9-11 attacks on the ten year anniversary, as if, with the implementation of the total surveillance state in the years hence, terrorists sit on the toilet without the spooks knowing about it. You must never be allowed to forget to be afraid, that you need to have your liberties stamped out in order to protect you. I digress again.

It is not debatable that Bin Laden denied involvement in the attacks three times in the months subsequent September 11. In the run-up to the Afghanistan campaign, the Taliban have just one simple request for America before we unleash our fury upon their already long-suffering people: show them the evidence that Bin Laden was behind the attack, and they will arrest him and turn him over to an international tribunal. The peace-seeking American government naturally refuses this simple request, which could've averted the longest running war in American history, at the time of this writing now near ten years long, with no end in sight or intended. Besides, Americans wanted blood, carnage, destruction. They wanted to sit and watch what was left of Kabul bombed into the stone age. A simple solution such as this would not do at all.

Meanwhile, two weeks after 9-11, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell promises, “in the near future … a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [bin Laden] to this attack.” The next day, then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer officially retracts that remark, assuring us all that we are happy to be patient as they decide which information is suitable for us to disseminate. And we were. Ten years on however, the case has never been made. Surely you believe the case is rock-solid, but I assure you, if you were to put on your thinking caps, you won't be able to remember an instance or instances where actual evidence was given to you. Perhaps this is because, as is apparent by viewing bin Laden's FBI Most Wanted web page, they lack the evidence to tie bin Laden to 9-11, being that 9-11 is not listed among the crimes he was wanted for.

Nor was such evidence ever necessary: the incessant media caricature of Bin Laden as the world's sole master of terror made certain that as soon as the second plane slammed into the building, our minds shut off and all we could “think” of was al Qaeda, bin Laden, al Qaeda, bin Laden…

Sadly I was guilty of this as well, and for a whole seven years after.

Eventually, after the debacle at Tora Bora that allowed – and when I say “allowed”, I mean allowed – Bin Laden to escape, “evidence” was conveniently found in the compound in the form of a video of Bin Laden palling around with fellow jihadists, explaining the intricacies of the attack and his involvement in it. It was a sickening example of how we are capable of willfully submitting ourselves to a collective hallucination, as the man in the video is obviously and insultingly not Osama bin Laden. Again, count me among the guilty.

Perhaps the most astounding fact about Bin Laden and his role as the world's most dangerous terrorist, at least formerly, is the case of his stay at an American hospital in Dubai in July, 2001. The London Guarding reported in November, 2001, that Bin Laden stayed for ten days in the hospital, was treated for kidney disease by an American doctor, and was paid a visit by at least two CIA agents and prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi Intelligence. It goes without saying that he was not arrested on the spot.

The question that arises from this is obvious: how could the world's most wanted criminal stay in an American hospital, be treated by an American doctor, and be visited by the CIA and the head of Saudi intelligence, only to be allowed to leave of his own recognizance to return, presumably, to Afghanistan, where we would be led to believe he saw through the final preparations for the 9-11 attacks? It is beyond the scope of this book to go into the history and true identity and purpose of “Osama bin Laden”, which to anyone who's read Orwell's novel 1984 must appear to be the contemporary version of Emmanuel Goldstein. Suffice it to say that he was not a rogue terrorist criminal wanted: dead or alive by our government; he was a CIA asset, with an actual code-name: Tim Osman, which he traveled under when visiting the United States and US military bases abroad. He was a hired jackal, a fictitious bogeyman who, along with his mercenary database known as al Qaeda, was sent out to wreak havoc on the world in the interests of his masters in the US government.

Funding

To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance. Al Qaeda had many avenues of funding. If a particular funding source had dried up, al Qaeda could have easily tapped a different source or diverted funds from another project to fund an operation that cost $400,000-$500,000 over nearly two years. – 9-11 Commission Report, chapter 5.4

You may or may not find it astounding that the source of the funding of the most heinous terrorist attack ever to be perpetrated on the United States, or the entire world, has no real practical value to the 9-11 Commission. I suppose it didn't matter to me when the report was released. This, they claim, is because the whole operation was carried out over a two year period on the cheap – a measly $166 per murder – with the transfer of funds made in small amounts. Even if the amounts were small, I'm sure more than a few people, perhaps the family members, who were treated like rodents by the Commission, would still like to know who paid for it all. Regardless, there was at least one major source of funding, the Commission knew about it, and it was no small amount.

On the morning of September 11, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence – ISI, the Pakistani equivalent to the CIA – was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, along with other members of the House Intelligence Committee. Upon hearing of the attack, according to Bob Graham, Pakistan's top spy was, “very empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States.” Why was he in America the morning of September 11th?

As to September 11th, federal authorities have told ABC News they have now tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Pakistan, to two banks in Florida, to accounts held by suspected hijack ring leader, Mohammed Atta. – Brian Ross, ABC News, September 30, 2001

The source of that $100,000 transfer to Muhammed Atta was General Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani ISI. Was it an intelligence failure to give red carpet treatment to the money man behind the 9-11 attacks? Or can we just heap this onto the pile of absurdities and coincidences already documented (and I'm not nearly done)?

This, like many essential aspects of the attacks of that day, was reported by multiple mainstream news outlets – CNN, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal. It was submitted to the commission by members of the victims' families, and thus it was irrefutably known to the 9-11 Commission. But since it couldn't be twisted to fit into the official conspiracy theory, which is insulting on its face, it, like many other events and circumstances of the day, officially never happened:

Well, I'm not aware of the $100,000 wired to Muhammed Atta. But, um, Pakistan, I think, is the most dangerous country in the world. – 9-11 Commission co-chair Thomas Kean

Hijackers

Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase.” – Seymour Hersh, What Went Wrong, New Yorker Magazine, October 2001

Finally, we arrive at The Nineteen: the kamikaze jihadists who supposedly brought a nation to its knees. What evidence do we have of their involvement? The evidence of their involvement is so extensive, so patently obvious, investigators must've thought they'd died and went to CSI heaven.

Aside from the miraculously recovered and incriminating identification documents found at the various crash scenes, Marwan Alshehhi's rental car was discovered at Boston's Logan airport. In it were found an Arabic flight manual, an airport Restricted Area pass, and documents from Huffman Aviation. Nawaf Alhazmi's rental car was discovered at Washington, DC Dulles International Airport. Inside were found instructions from Muhammed Atta, a check made out to a flight school in Phoenix, Arizona, four drawings of a 757 cockpit, a knife, and maps of Washington, DC and New York City. On September 10, Muhammed Atta hitched a flight with fellow 'jacker Abdulaziz al-Omari to Portland, Maine. The reason for this trip is never elaborated. Considering the close proximity to the day of their martyrdom, it must've been significant. Indeed, because their flight from Portland to Boston was delayed – would that their flight to Boston were delayed just a few more minutes! – a piece of Atta's luggage remained in Portland. This suitcase was a treasure trove of damning evidence, including airline uniforms, flight manuals, instructions to his fellow hijackers, and, strangly, Atta's last will and testament. We are led to believe, if we bother to think about it, that a man smart enough to outwit the most advanced defense mechanism in the history of humankind was dumb enough to bring his own will onto a plane doomed to be annihilated in a massive explosion. But then again, Satam Alsuqami's passport made it through it all, so perhaps Atta was onto something.

Known as “the cradle of US Navy Aviation”, the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida was, according to drivers' licenses and car registrations, the home of Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmad Alnami (both from United Airlines 93), and Ahmed Alghamdi (United Airlines 175) - 10 Radford Boulevard, to be exact – a base roadway on which residences for foreign-military flight trainees are located. Muhammad Atta graduated from the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Abdulaziz Alomari attended Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas. And Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterrey, California, a US Army installation and the Department of Defense's primary foreign language school.

Could it be possible that five 9-11 hijackers lived at and/or trained at US military bases, and this is just another insignificant coincidence? Of course, if you follow the media's lead, then yes, absolutely. All the Department of Defense had to do is tell them, “We are probably not talking about the same people,” and, even though the bulk of the above information originated from a Newsweek article, it was immediately relegated to cuckoo conspiracy status.

Though you are not supposed to think too deeply into this – in fact don't think about it at all – there is no confusion of identity in the case of Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi (both from American Airlines Flight 77). Their last known residence before they “martyred” themselves was near San Diego, where they were roommates with an FBI informant. What a coincidence. But it gets more absurd: at least six 9/11 hijackers, including all who were supposedly on Flight 77 – Hani Hanjour, Majed Moqed, Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, and Salem Alhazmi, were living in Laurel, Maryland through August, 2001. NSA expert James Bamford later tells us why this is significant:

The terrorist cell that eventually took over the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon ended up living, working, planning and developing all their activities in Laurel, Maryland, which happens to be the home of the NSA. So they were actually living alongside NSA employees as they were plotting all these things.

So not only are 9-11 hijackers living at US military bases, not only do they attend US military schools, not only do they room with the FBI, but they live among the National Security Agency.

Let us for a moment refrain from thinking about the absurdity of this going on under our nose without our intelligence gathering and military institutions knowing it. That's absurd enough on its face. What is truly insulting is the idea that al Qaeda would be stupid enough to plot the most complex, devastating terrorist plot in the history of the world while planting its operatives where they would be most likely to be discovered. I ask you, who is the whackjob: me, or people who actually believe this nonsense?

The absurdities compound. We are told that three commercial jumbo aircraft were flown into their targets with expert precision, yet we know that all of the pilots received minimal flight training. Easily the worst of the lot was Hani Hanjour, Flight 77, which (allegedly) crashed into the Pentagon. Hanjour was so inept at piloting it cannot even be said he was an amateur. In fact, he couldn't even drive an automobile adeptly enough to pass his driving test, much less fly a sophisticated, state-of-the-art commercial jumbo jet. And yet Hanjour's flight performance was the most difficult. Russ Wittenberg, who flew large commercial airliners for 35 years after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, said that it would have been “totally impossible for an amateur who couldn't even fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a highly professional manner.” Former Navy and Pan-American Airlines pilot Ted Muga said, “I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature.” And former 757 pilot Ralph Omholt tells us, “The idea that an unskilled pilot could have flown this trajectory is simply too ridiculous to consider.”

[Hanjour was] a weak student who was wasting our resources. … He didn't do his homework, didn't attend on time and he would sort of come and go. … He was not able to fly solo in a small plane, which is equivalent to getting out of a parking space [in a car] and stopping. … We didn’t want him back at our school because he was not serious about becoming a good pilot. – Duncan Hastie, Cockpit Resource Management

[Hanjour had] only the barest understanding what the instruments were there to do. – Wes Fults, flight simulator manager, Sawyer Aviation, Phoenix, Arizona, which, according to the Washington Post, was “known locally as a flight school of last resort.”

Federal Aviation Administration records show he obtained a commercial pilot's license in April 1999, but how and where he did so remains a lingering question that FAA officials refuse to discuss. His limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots. – Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun and George Lardner Jr. (of The Washington Post), Hanjour an Unlikely Terrorist, The Cape Cod Times, October 21, 2001

Hani Hanjour, who investigators contend piloted airliner that crashed into Pentagon on Sept 11, was reported to Federal Aviation Administration in Feb 2001 after instructors at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Phoenix found his piloting skills so shoddy and his grasp of English so inadequate that they questioned whether his pilot's license was genuine. – Jim Yardley, A Trainee Noted for Incompetence, New York Times, May 4, 2002

There was no suspicion as far as evildoing. It was more of a very typical instructional concern that “you really shouldn't be in the air.” – Marilyn Ladner, vice president, Pan Am International Flight Academy

I'm still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all. – unnamed ex-Pan Am International Flight Academy employee, quoted in Jim Yardley's A Trainee Noted for Incompetence, New York Times, May 4, 2002

Months before Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon, managers at an Arizona flight school reported him at least five times to the FAA … They reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad, they told the Associated Press, they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license. – Vincent Gonzales, CBS News, May 5, 2002

I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had. – Peggy Chevrette, manager for the now-defunct JetTech flight school in Phoenix, Arizona

[W]hen Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons. – Thomas Frank, New York Newsday, Tracing Trail of Hijackers, September 23, 2001

The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane. You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe. … And it was just a countdown. Ten miles west. Nine miles west. Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the information, [that] we have an unidentified very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, 8 miles west. … And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second. – Danielle O'Brien, air traffic controller, Dulles International Airport

According to the official conspiracy theory, Hanjour takes Flight 77 on a direct path to the Pentagon. At this point, it would be easiest, and inflict the most damage and casualties, if he were to simply continue on this path and crash the plane into the building. Instead, he performs an aerobatic, nearly impossible 270-degree downward spiral, and maneuvers the plane head-on fifty feet above the ground at over 400 knots (over 460mph) to strike the one side of the building that had be renovated and reinforced to bolster it against an attack. Had the plane struck anywhere else, the death toll would've been in the thousands, including some of the top Pentagon and military brass, and possibly our friend, Secretary of State, Donald “Aspartame” Rumsfeld; instead it killed 125. What a coincidence.

The adversary is closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. … In fact it could be said that it's a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American's. … According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. – Donald Rumsfeld, September 10, 2001

Not only being the sole side of the Pentagon with walls reinforced against an attack, the destruction of this section of the Pentagon forever erased, except from Youtube and the minds of quack conspiracy theorists everywhere, the case of the missing $2.3 trillion. Which is why you've likely never heard of it.

What does the 9-11 Commission have to say about this miraculous, reckless and unnecessary performance by Hanjour? It claims that that Hanjour was “perhaps the most experienced and highly trained of all the 9/11 pilots.” This despite the fact that Saeed Alghamdi, who is still alive, was (is) an airline pilot in Saudi Arabia. This might explain why, though Alghamdi, a seasoned commercial jet pilot, was allegedly among the group who hijacked United flight 93, the 9-11 Commission lists amateur Ziad Jarrah as its pilot.

Further, Flight 77 was described as unusually light in passengers that day. On what was originally to be a trans-continental flight, from Dulles International in Washington, DC, to Los Angeles International Airport, Flight 77 – with all four hijacked planes filled to similar light capacity on trans-continental flights – only 64 out of 188 seats are filled. Anyone who flies knows this occurs about as often as seeing a unicorn grazing on your grass in your backyard.

Moreover, the passengers who were on the two-thirds empty Boeing 757 included Barbara Olsen, the wife of Solicitor General Ted Olsen, and employees and representatives from Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, the Department of Defense, the Navy, the Army, and American Airlines. That's quite a list of military, government, and military industrial complex luminaries on one sparsely populated flight, which just happened to be the one supposedly hijacked and flown into the Pentagon. Added to this list is Charles Burlingame, the pilot, who was an aeronautical engineer and a graduate of the Naval Academy and “Top Gun” fighter pilot school. He also worked with the Pentagon developing anti-terrorism strategies, before retiring from the Navy in 1989. And yet we are told that Hanjour and his cohorts were able, armed with box cutters, to hijack Burlingame's plane and crash it into the Pentagon without incident. Is that even remotely believable? Not if you expend the necessary energy to contemplate it, which is more than most people are willing to do.

At this point, the hard-core skeptic is having a really difficult time with this alternative view. If Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, what did? What happened to the passengers and crew, who have families who all, we assume, believe they were killed that day? What about the eyewitnesses who testified to seeing a commercial jet strike the Pentagon? There are those who are sure it was a cruise missile or a bomb, and they claim to have all the proof necessary. I, personally, have not seen smoking gun evidence that proves beyond rational doubt that the Pentagon was struck by either a plane, a missile, or a bomb. It was obviously struck by something, but I won't say what it was. This is one of those instances which, so long as the government withholds relevant evidence that would show what happened there – in particular the confiscated surveillance tapes – this conspiracy “theory” would be laid to rest, one way or the other. What the above evidence does show is that it is impossible for Flight 77, piloted by Hani Hanjour, to have struck the Pentagon. Was there another pilot on board we are not aware of? Not among the hijackers: Hanjour was the only one on board known to have any training, however inept he was. Was the plane commandeered by remote control? It is absolutely possible, as it is possible it was a missile or a bomb. For now, what didn't happen will have to suffice minus relevant evidence.

Moving on, the official narrative tells us that the 9-11 hijackers were devout fundamentalist Muslims progressively living their lives toward one final destination – their deaths in a fiery cataclysm, and the entrance into paradise, married to the black-eyed, the 72 virgins that await those who die a martyr's death. The 9-11 Commission Report echoes this, reporting that the hijackers were a “trained cadre of operatives willing to die,” and that Atta in particular had become “fanatically” religious. Their behavior during their “final” days tells a different story.

Three guys cavorting with lap dancers at the Pink Pony Nude Theater.

Two others knocking back glasses of Stolichnaya and rum and Coke at a fish joint in Hollywood the weekend before committing suicide and mass murder.

That might describe the behavior of several men who are suspects in Tuesday’s terrorist attack, but it is not a picture of devout Muslims, experts say. Let alone that of religious zealots in their final days on Earth. – Jody A. Benjamin, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 16, 2001

According to a girlfriend of Muhammed Atta's, a Florida restaurant manager named Amanda Knox, he loved pork chops, drank heavily, and snorted cocaine. In February, 2001, Atta, Knox and another women went on a three day drug and booze bender – “a continuous party” – in the Florida Keys. Authorities would later threaten Knox not to say anything more about Atta. “I can't really discuss anything. I'm afraid I'll get in trouble.” Knox would later retract her story.

Five days before the attack, Atta and his cousin visited a bar in Hollywood, Florida, already drunk, where they continued to drink themselves into a stupor, and refused to pay for their bill, despite bragging about being American Airlines pilots. Waleed M. Alshehri and Wail Alshehri spent September 9, 2001 with a high-priced hooker in a Boston hotel room - twice. In late Winter, 2001, hijacker Ziad Jarrah lives in Jacksonville, Florida, where he is known to frequent strip clubs. According to the FBI, Hamza Alghamdi and Marwan Alshehhi make two purchases of “pornographic video and sex toys” from a Florida store. They spend $252.17 on videos and toys at Video Outlet in Deerfield Beach on July 4, then return on July 27 and spend another $183.22. They are also reported to have attended strip shows, watched porn, and use an escort service.

Five days after 9-11, the UK Daily Mail ran the following report:

At the Palm Beach bar Sunrise 251, Atta and al Shehhi spent $1,000 in 45 minutes on Krug and Perrier-Jouet champagne … Atta was with a 6 foot busty brunette in her late twenties; the other man was with a shortish blonde. Both women were known locally as regular companions of high-rollers.

In October, 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on our jihadists' getaway in Vegas. In a story titled Agents of Terror Leave Their Mark on Sin City, reported:

The self-styled warriors for Allah -- who believed their hijackings would earn them eager virgins in heaven -- engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures in America's reputed capital of moral corrosion.

This included frequenting a strip joint on a dreary stretch of the old downtown known mainly for $10 street hookers and easy heroin, where they were known to receive lap dances (and tip poorly for them). The official narrative tells us the purpose of their (multiple – at least six) meetings is unknown – the FBI actually knocked on doors looking for a Vegas connection to the 9-11 attack. This belays the obvious: the hijackers came here – there were countless other places they could've met that would've been less conspicuous – because they were pigs who enjoyed some of the most forbidden behaviors allowed for in Islam: drugs, alcohol, eating pork, gambling, and prostitution. There are of course those who justify this by claiming they were just trying not to act too devout, lest they draw attention to themselves, but it is clear they indulged just a bit too enthusiastically.

Finally, amazingly, as I've hinted at throughout, several of the 9-11 hijackers – as many as seven of them: Waleed Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Mohand Alshehri, Salem Alhazmi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Ahmed Alnami – have been confirmed by mainstream media, particularly BBC, as being alive and well. But as happened in the case of the hijackers training and living in US military bases, the BBC story was dismissed with the claim that Arabs often have very similar sounding names. You might be tempted to accept this explanation, without bothering to match the photographs of those BBC claims are still alive with the official government photographs of the 9-11 hijackers. If you did you'd discover these are not different people.

NORAD

On October 25, 1999, a lear jet carrying champion golfer Payne Stewart loses pressure at high altitude, rendering the pilot and passengers unconscious as it traveled on autopilot. After air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, it was tracked by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), assisted by several Air Force and Air National Guard fighters and an AWACS radar control plane, up until it crashed.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at 9:44am; NORAD’s Southeast Air Defense Sector was notified of the emergency at 9:55am. Pentagon officials said the military began its pursuit of the rogue jet at 10:08am, following it for much of the four hours it flew, its windows frosted over, until it ran out of fuel and crashed in an uninhabited area of South Dakota. Some years later, the 9-11 Commission would compare the military's response to this incident with its performance on September 11, 2001, and found, ridiculously, that “There is no significant difference in NORAD’s reaction to the two incidents.”

This claim is difficult to gauge because there are, officially, three explanations for NORAD's utter lack of any kind of defense of this country on that day. Days after the attack, we were told that no warplanes were in the air until after Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:38am. This despite the fact that, it was reported, the hijacking of Flight 11 had been known since 8:15am. This means that for approximately 83 minutes – as opposed to the 13 or so minutes it took them to track the Payne Stewart jet – the military sat on its hands while our nation was supposedly under massive terrorist attack.

Days later a second story was released, indicating that the military had scrambled jets, but, because the FAA had supposedly delayed in notifying them, they could not intercept the hijacked planes in time. In mid-September, 2001, NORAD made this narrative official, providing a timeline which indicated contrasted when the FAA notified NORAD with when fighter jets were sent airborne. This new timeline indicated the FAA had notified NORAD that Flight 175 had been hijacked a full 20 minutes before it struck the South Tower. We can reasonably assume that, while perhaps not much could've been done to stop Flight 175 from striking the South Tower, there was more than enough time to muster a response, particularly given that there was no way to know if more planes might be headed for New York City and Washington.

The second explanation being woefully inadequate, the 9-11 Commission simply claimed that NORAD's timeline, which had stood as the official narrative for nearly three years, was “incorrect”, and put out a third story, as if no one would notice – and who in fact did notice, except the kooks and conspiracy theorists – completely rewriting NORAD's timeline. According to this new timeline, the FAA did not even notify NORAD about Flight 175 or Flight 77 until after they had struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, respectively. No indication was given as to how or why the Pentagon's second story could stand for so long, only to be shown wrong by the 9-11 Commission. They were either incompetent or they were lying.

Within the FAA, it is standard operating procedure for the an air traffic controller to notify a superior immediately if any indication is given of a hijacking. If the issue is not resolved immediately, the superior is to contact NORAD, which will then scramble fighter jets to intercept and determine the seriousness of the situation. According to the United States Air Force website, F-15s can go from "scramble order" to 29,000 feet in only two and a half minutes; F-15s fly at over 1800 miles per hour.

Corroborating this is Ralph Eberhart, the head of NORAD, who stated that after the FAA senses that something is wrong, “it takes about one minute” for it to contact NORAD, after which NORAD can scramble fighter jets “within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States.” These are post-9-11 statements, so we might assume they reflect a change in policy after the attacks, however, according to an Air Traffic Control document sent out in 1998,

The U.S. military has their own network of radars looking over the U.S. borders, and out over the ocean (NORAD). They are tied into the FAA computer to be able to get information on incoming flights from overseas, but if they see a target over international waters headed toward the U.S., without flight plan information, they will call on the "shout" line to the appropriate Center sector for an ID. Sector 66 might get a call to ID a radar target, and if 66 has no datablock or other information on it, the military will usually scramble an intercept flight. Essentially always they turn out to be private pilots ("VFR") not talking to anybody, who stray too far outside the boundary, then get picked up on their way back in. But, procedures are procedures, and they will likely find two F-18's on their tail within 10 or so minutes.

In October, 2001 the Calgary Herald reported that in the year 2000, NORAD had scrambled fighters 129 times. Days after 9/11, NORAD spokesman Major Mike Snyder told the Boston Globe that “[NORAD's] fighters routinely intercept aircraft.” This is in stark contrast to NORAD's performance on 9-11.

Even more bizarre is that, despite involving three grossly contradictory stories, the official narrative on NORAD's lack of response is accepted without question. As David Ray Griffin adeptly explains,

Let's say that the police ask Charlie Jones where he was Saturday night. He says he was at the movie theater, but they say, "No, the movie theater has been closed all week." Then Charlie says, "Oh, that's right, I was with my girl friend." But, the police say, "No, we checked with her and she was home with her husband." If at that point Charlie says, "Oh, now I remember, I was home reading my Bible," you are probably not going to believe him.

And yet, that is precisely what the official narrative has told us, and we implicitly trust it and defend it with great vim and verve.

Worse, the third official story is contradicted by considerable evidence, if not common sense. The 9-11 Commission claims NORAD did not know about Flight 175 until it crashed into the South Tower. However, according to a story in the Toronto Star, Captain Michael Jellinek, a Canadian who on 9/11 was overseeing NORAD's headquarters in Colorado, was on the phone with NORAD as he watched Flight 175 strike the South Tower. He then asked, “Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?” NORAD responded, “Yes.”

The Commission's timeline is also contradicted by a memo sent to the Commission by Laura Brown, Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs at the FAA. Her memo states,

Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center, FAA headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service, and other government agencies. The US Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD on a separate line. The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, including Flight 77.

This indicates that the FAA had been sharing information about Flight 77 even before the formal notification time of 9:24. This memo was read into the Commission record by Commission Ben Veniste on May 23, 2003, but the final report fails to mention this memo.

What we see here is a level of incompetence so great it can only be described as willful. But there is more to the story than just the actions – or lack thereof – of NORAD that day. There is the testimony before the 9-11 commission of the Secretary of Transportation under George W. Bush, Norman Mineta. Conventional wisdom remembers Mineta as the man responsible for grounding all planes in the United States after United 93 allegedly crashed in Shanksville. But his testimony was so explosive, so damning, it is further testimony to the uselessness of our political system and media, that evidence that could have so radically altered the official narrative was presented in the light of day and yet, again, exists only on Youtube and in the minds of conspiracy quacks in their pajamas hiding in their parents' basement.

Not only does it all but implicitly finger at least one of the persons responsible for ordering NORAD to stand down, it is also throws a cog in multiple witnesses' timelines, from Vice President Dick Cheney to the 9-11 Commission itself. But this testimony does not fall into line with the official narrative, which is infallible and sacrosanct, and so Mineta's testimony was scrubbed from the final report and the 9-11 Commission archive. He tells us,

During the time then … the airplane coming in to the Pentagon … there was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant.

This, it would seem, in a sane would, would open up multiple avenues of inquiry and investigation. Who was this unknown young man? We'd like to hear from him. If the Vice President, at the highest level of our government, was aware that Flight 77 was on a collision course with the Pentagon, why weren't evacuation orders issued? Even if it were not known that the west wing of the Pentagon would be struck, rather than any other part of the building which would've caused far greater casualties, at least 125 lives could've been saved. As with the World Trade Center, the more casualties that can be caused, the greater the dramatic impact. And 9-11 was, if anything, designed for maximum dramatic response from the American people.

And finally, the most obvious question raised by Mineta's testimony: what, exactly, were the “orders” the young man inquired about that generated such an annoyed response from Cheney? Clearly the orders were not to shoot Flight 77 down before it struck the Pentagon. Not only is it clear that someone obstructed NORAD from defending the nation during this attack, it is widely believed, and should be assumed, that the Pentagon is defended by retractable surface-to-air missile batteries. Even if this is unfounded, Andrews Air Force Base is only ten miles from the Pentagon.

Consider: it was definitely know by 9:03am – the moment flight 175 struck the South Tower – that this was a massive terrorist attack involving multiple hijacked aircraft. This is a full 34 minutes before Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. It takes a monumental leap of faith to believe, with this knowledge in hand, that this failure was simply the bureaucratic bumblings of a multi-trillion dollar defense mechanism. Richard P Myers, who at the time was in line to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We're pretty good if the threat is coming from outside; we're not so good if it's coming from the inside.” Why is there a difference, what could that difference possibly be, and why did no one press him to elaborate?

War Games

8:37am

Boston Center:Hi, Boston Center T.M.U. [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS):Is this real-world or exercise?

Boston Center:No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

I had not originally intended this chapter to be so involved. Not that I didn't want to cover all aspects of the conspiracy; I realize that not all levels of the conspiracy will be known, but I do know that what is available to us is enough to indict our government for perpetrating the crime, and the 9-11 Commission for aiding and abetting in the coverup. I originally wrote in my blog about 9-11 years ago, but, having expanded on it now in a far more involved manner, I had not realized at the time how woefully inadequate my original piece was. This time, wanting to cover as much of the scope of the conspiracy as I was able, it seemed as though a dozen times I thought I was near completing it, only to be reminded of pieces of the puzzle I'd not covered yet that were just too important to leave out.

That said, I will now attempt to bring this chapter to a close, mercifully with one final impossible coincidence. But this coincidence is actually several coincidences wrapped into one: the war games accuring on 9-11 that mimic, almost to a “T”, the actual terrorist attack going on at the same time.

But first, let's fast forward to the aftermath, where we hear, on multiple occasions, President Bush and members of his administration waxing dramatic about how they could not possibly have envisioned such an attack occurring in the United States; thus this is why our response was so pathetically incompetent.

Never did, in anybody's thought process about how to protect America did we ever think … that, uh …the evildoers … would fly no one, but four commercial aircraft into precious US targets – never. – George W Bush, September 16, 2001

I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center; take another one and slam it into the Pentagon. – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002

Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government could envision flying airplanes into buildings … on such a massive scale. – George W Bush, April 13, 2004

That turns out not to be true. According to an April 18, 2004 piece in USA Today,

In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises.

“Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures.”

One such exercise, known as Amalgam Virgo, took place in early June, 2001. One scenario simulated involved a commercial aircraft being hijacked and flown into the US Capitol building. The excuse given in this case is that these scenarios involved hijacked planes being flown in from foreign countries, not from within the United States. We must, however, ask: what's the difference? It has already been established that NORAD was aware of the hijackings with enough advanced notice to foment at least some type of response; yet remarkably, we are expected to believe that after Flight 77 struck the Pentagon and the event was all but over, a light bulb went off in their heads and they finally thought, “Hey, aren't we supposed to be defending this nation against this attack? We'd better get some planes in the air!”

To add to the confusion, and to add to plausible deniability, a number of the same types of war games were taking place the exact same morning of the attacks. What a coincidence.

Cynthia McKinney:We had four war games going on on September 11, and the question that I tried to pose before the Secretary (Rumsfeld) had to go to lunch was whether or not the activities of the four war games going on on September 11 actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks.

Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff:The answer to the question is, no it did not impair our response. In fact … it enhanced our ability to respond.

This is one of those instances where common sense must be hurdled in order to swallow the official narrative. Were there any war games going on during the Payne Stewart incident, or any of the dozens of incidents where NORAD scrambled fighters to intercept wayward private and commercial aircraft? If interceptions of this type are “routine”, and NORAD's response to the attacks of the day was anything but routine, then how could the coinciding war games have actually helped NORAD's response, which was, literally, non-existent?

Vigilant Guardian was the name of Pentagon war game exercises conducted every year until September 11, 2001. In fact, on that date a Vigilant Guardian exercise was in its second day, with one of the scenarios involving hijacked airplanes targeting New York City. Fort Belvoir, located 10 miles south of the Pentagon, ran its own drill that day, intended to test security against a terrorist attack. The National Reconnaissance Office in Virginia ran its own drill beginning at 8:45am, conducted in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, in which a hijacked plane is crashed into their building.

Meanwhile, under an exercise known as Norther Vigilance, fighter jets are sent to Canada and Alaska to monitor a fleet of Russian MiGs running their own training exercise. As part of Northern Vigilance, inputs, or “phantoms”, were inserted onto military radar screens, indicating errant hijacked aircraft for them to track. Phantoms appear real to those participating in the exercise, so that, on September 11, anyone participating in Northern Vigilance would not be able to tell the difference between the phantoms and the actual hijacked aircraft attacking New York and Washington, DC. Also during that morning, three F-16s out of Andrews AFB, which is about 10 miles from the Pentagon, are ordered to fly over 180 nautical miles away for a training mission in North Carolina.

So to recap, on the morning of September 11, the military and various intelligence agencies just so happen to be simulating drills, which involve, among other things, terrorist attacks, with scenarios including hijacked aircraft going in and out of radar, some which are crashed into buildings in New York and Washington, DC, while fighter jets are diverted away from the Northeast Corridor where the attacks take place. Not only should you not think anything conspiracy-like about all of this, but you are expected to believe this activity actually enhanced the military's response to the attack, not hindered it. Who, exactly, are the quacks here?

The chain of evidence – this mountain of damning facts that point incontrovertibly to a false flag black op – goes on and on, from the “put options” on American and United Airlines bought in massive numbers prior to the attack, to the numerous officials being told not to fly that day (the mayor of Los Angeles was told by none other than Condolisa Rice herself not to fly that day). The official conspiracy theory and those perpetrating it need not trouble themselves with ludicrous, easily disproven facts and assertions; impossible coincidences. Most people cannot distinguish between unofficial and official conspiracy theories; in terms of conspiracy theories, there only exists the unofficial, which they do not consider “unofficial”. It's just crazy, period. They will never examine these facts to discover the validity of the official story, because there is no middle ground between the government's story – historical fact – and the kooks and the quacks – up there with Elvis still being alive, the moon landing being staged, and people being abducted by aliens.

Rational thought does not play a part in the discussion. The very idea that the US government would do such a thing is a blasphemy so horrid that the evidence cannot be intelligently dissected. The sense of guilt one feels in considering such an allegation is an insurmountable obstacle to seeing the truth. The evidence, no matter how compelling, no matter how obvious, is background noise. The ego in its vigorous defense of its identities, particularly with its sense of patriotism, completely tunes them out. It cannot even be admitted that the nutjobs and the kooks actually may actually be onto something here, which, while not proving or suggesting there may have been a government plot involved, presents questions that demand answers. They would find themselves immediately outcast; their friends and family would mock them behind their backs; they would become a figure of fun. In today's world, social standing and prestige is infinitely more important than the truth.

Despite all of this, there exists a rapidly expanding minority in this country that, with the wealth of information available to them in this information age, cannot ignore the truth any longer. With the wars based on lies, with the maniacal assault on our civil liberties, the youth of today – and many of our elders – do not have the same blind patriotic attachment to their government as previous generations. Sooner or later, the truth will permeate our entire society. There are only two types of people: those who know 9-11 was an inside job, and those who will.